SBIR Phase II: Using microbial genetic data to improve oil production efficiency and reduce environmental impact

这项小企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力将是提高国内石油生产的效率。使用目前的方法，石油工业只能从页岩地层中提取5%的已知碳氢化合物。这意味着美国经济中有超过5000亿美元的潜在石油和天然气无法经济开采。其目的是通过提供新的地下信息来改善作业决策，从而提高石油生产效率。因此，每口井可为生产商增加高达100万美元的价值。此外，它还可以显著降低水力压裂过程对环境的影响，目前水力压裂的效率只有50%。通过为行业提供新颖的地下数据，这些信息可以减少对环境的影响，节省高达450亿加仑的淡水和1M轨道车的开采砂。此外，地下微生物组的分析是一个丰富的新学术知识领域。在第一阶段鉴定的微生物菌株中，超过80%从未在公共参考文献中记录。这项工作不仅提供了经济和社会价值，而且扩展了科学知识。SBIR二期项目建议使用新一代微生物组分析来提高国内石油生产效率。研究目标是分析地下油气微生物组，以表征油气储层，并利用这一新的数据源来提高当前的效率。目标是分析美国西南部的50口生产井，并建立将微生物剖面与关键储层特性联系起来的统计模型，从而提高生产效率。所采用的分析方法将利用政府向科罗拉多大学提供的2000多万美元资金，用于开发被称为“QIIME”的生物信息学软件。QIIME技术已经在分析和模拟人类微生物组方面进行了广泛的测试，但在第一阶段工作之前，从未将其应用于地下油气微生物组。通过结合云计算、DNA测序和新型软件分析技术的进步，该项目将证明这些微生物群落与油气行业有意义的生产参数相关。通过这样做，该项目将在试点规模上证明，这种新的信息源可以作为一种新颖的、非侵入性的、低成本的储层表征工具，使油气行业能够在最大限度地提高油气产量的同时，最大限度地减少对环境的影响。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will be to increase the efficiency of domestic oil production. Using current methods, the oil industry is able to extract only 5% of the known hydrocarbon from shale formation. This represents more than $500B of potential oil and gas that cannot be economically produced for the US economy. The aim is to increase the efficiency of oil production by providing novel subsurface information to improve operational decision making. The resulting value increase for a producer can be up to $1M per well. In addition, it is possible to significantly reduce the environmental impact of the hydraulic fracturing process, which is currently only 50% efficient. By providing novel subsurface data for the industry, this information can reduce environmental impact by saving up to 45B gallons of fresh water and 1M rail cars of mined sand. Furthermore, the analysis of subsurface microbiomes is a rich area for new academic knowledge. Over 80% of the microbial strains identified in Phase I have never been documented in public references. This work not only provides economic and social value, but also expands scientific knowledge.This SBIR Phase II project proposes to use next-generation microbiome analyses to increase the efficiency of domestic oil production. The research objective is to analyze the subsurface hydrocarbon microbiome to characterize hydrocarbon reservoirs and leverage this new data source to increase current efficiency rates. The goal is to analyze 50 producing wells in the Southwestern US, and develop statistical models linking microbial profiles to key reservoir properties that can increase production efficiencies. The analytical method employed will utilize technology stemming from over $20 million in government funding to the University of Colorado used to create bioinformatics software known as "QIIME." The QIIME technology has been extensively tested in analyzing and modeling the human microbiome, but has never been applied to the subsurface hydrocarbon microbiome prior to the Phase I work. By combining advances in cloud computing, DNA sequencing, and novel software analytics, this project will demonstrate that these microbial communities correlate to meaningful production parameters for the oil and gas industry. In so doing, the project will demonstrate at pilot scale that this new information source can be utilized as a novel, non-invasive, low-cost reservoir characterization tool that allows the industry to maximize hydrocarbon production while minimizing environmental impact.